_On the Ice Fields of Nadia_
B'ronth the Utalian left footprints in the snow.
Otherwise, B'ronth was invisible. But if a hidden observer watched the
Utalian's slow progress across the ice fields of Nadia he would see
where the ice was soft or where snow had fallen during the night into
the gullies, the unexpected, mysterious appearance of footprints, a
left staggered after a right, then another left, then a right again,
then a left.
Actually, B'ronth the Utalian was not invisible. But like all
Utalians, he was a chameleon of a man. Within seconds his skin would
assume the color of its environment, utterly and completely. Thus,
from above B'ronth the Utalian was the dazzling white of the Nadian
ice-fields; from below, looking up at the pale cloudless sky, he was
cold, transparent blue.
All morning he had been trailing the girl. He had reached her camp on
the road to Nadia only moments after she had quit it in company with
an old man. From the tattered snow cloaks they wore, they both clearly
were wayfarers. B'ronth could have challenged them at once, sprinting
across the ice toward them, but he hadn't done that. B'ronth the
Utalian was a coward. He accepted the fact objectively: his people
were notorious cowards. The proper time would come, he told himself.
There would come a time when the girl and the old man were helpless.
Then he, B'ronth, would strike.
The day before an Abarian warrior had given him a description of the
girl and had promised him a bag of gold for her capture, half a bag of
gold if he killed her and could prove it. A bag of gold, he thought.
He would take her alive. It was a long, cold road to Nadia City. True,
B'ronth the Utalian was small of stature, a puny creature like all his
people. And there were certain disadvantages in his perfect
camouflage. He was walking naked across the ice-fields in order to
remain unseen. His flesh shivered and his bones were stiff. But a
Nadian boy named Lulukee, whom B'ronth had promised half the gold, was
not many minutes' march behind him with warm clothing, food, and
drink. After he captured the girl....
* * * * *
Invisible, he mounted a rise where solid sheet ice adhered to the
shoulder of a rocky hill. Below him, traversing a snow-floored valley
and so far away that they were mere dots against the snow, were the
old man and the girl.
B'ronth the Utalian chuckled. The sound was swept up instantly and
dispersed by the wind. It was a cold wind and it all but froze B'ronth
to the marrow, but the Nadian sun was surprisingly warm and now seemed
to beam down on him with promise of his golden reward. Shivering both
from cold and delight, the invisible Utalian walked swiftly down into
the snow-mantled valley.
There would be a trail of footprints for the boy Lulukee to
follow....
* * * * *
"Cold, Hammeth?" Ylia asked her companion.
"No, girl. I'll manage if you will. Is it much further?"
"Half a day's march to Nadia City yet, I'm afraid," Ylia said. "We
could rest if you wish."
The man was extremely old by Tarthian standards, probably three
hundred and fifty years old. He wore a snow-cape of _purullian_ fur
which the wind whipped about his bony frame and up over his completely
bald head. "I'm sorry, Ylia," he said suddenly. There were tears in
his eyes which the cold and the wind did not explain.
"What for? You came to the cave. You accompanied me here to Nadia."
"When Retoc the Abarian almost killed the White God, I fled with the
others."
"If you didn't flee you too might have been slain, Hammeth."
"Yet you remained behind."
"He still lived. Someone had to tend him."
Hammeth's breath came in shallow gasps. He once had been a strong, big
man, but the life and the strength had fled his frame when Retoc
destroyed Ofrid, a hundred years before. As a wayfarer on the Plains
of Ofrid, he had aged in those hundred years. And he had shrunk and
shriveled with approaching senility. "Tell me, Ylia," he asked,
panting, "is this Bram Forest you speak of indeed the--the god of the
legend? The God of the Tower come to right the ancient wrongs?"
A frown marred the beauty of Ylia's matchless face. "At first," she
said with a far-away look in her lovely eyes, "at first I thought he
was. Hadn't he come, suddenly, from nowhere, at the ordained moment?
But then when he did not slay Retoc, when instead he allowed Retoc the
use of his whip-sword and was almost slain by Retoc, when he bled like
any mortal, when he--" All at once Ylia was blushing.
"What is it, child?" Hammeth asked.
"Nothing. It is nothing."
"Ylia. You were the infant daughter of a lady in waiting of the royal
court of Ofrid. I was a captain of the Queen's Guards. When Retoc's
legions brought their death and destruction, I fled to the wilderness
with you. I raised you from infancy. I--" the old man's eyes clouded
over with emotion--"you have no secrets from me, child."
Ylia was still blushing. But a serene smile replaced the frown on her
face. "Very well, Father Hammeth, I will tell you. There in the cave
as I nursed the stranger back to health, as he grew stronger and could
move about, as we conversed and came to know each other, I--I desired
him."
Hammeth said nothing. His face was stern.
"Please," said Ylia, laughing now that her secret was out. "It wasn't
the kind of desire that could make me a candidate for the Golden Ape,
but--I desired him. It was a pure, sweet emotion, such as I have never
felt before. I wanted him. I wanted to serve him. I wanted to spend my
life helping him and ... Hammeth ... Father Hammeth ... loving him.
There, I have said it."
* * * * *
Hammeth only muttered. They plodded on through the snow, which here
was deep and powdery so they floundered sometimes to their knees.
"But a girl shouldn't feel such desire for a god, so I told myself he
was mortal." Abruptly and for no reason that Hammeth could fathom,
Ylia began to cry.
"What is it, child? What is it?"
"He--he fled. He had lost much blood and he was weak, yes, but he
didn't even stay to protect me. He fled from Retoc. Is that a god? Is
that even a man who can bring retribution to Retoc? Is it, Hammeth? Is
it?"
"Yet you're taking the road to Nadia even as legend says the White God
will take the road to Nadia."
"Nonsense," said Ylia, wiping away her tears. "Someone has to tell the
Nadians what really happened to poor Jlomec, that's all. Retoc, Retoc
will have them eating off his hand. He'll have them believing whatever
he says. They'll never know that he killed a prince of their royal
blood."
"But what can Bontarc of Nadia--or anyone--do against the power of
Retoc's Abarians?"
"The White God could--"
"Ah, you see? Then perhaps you do believe, after all."
"The White God or whoever he was," said Ylia coldly, "fled a coward
from Retoc." She pouted. "And yet, and yet he seemed so confused."
"Perhaps he fled so that the Ofridians might live again in the pride
of their greatness," Hammeth declared with vehemence.
"You believe, don't you, Father Hammeth?" Ylia asked simply.
"I want to believe, child."
"You're panting so. You're tired. We'll have to stop and rest."
They were traversing the deepest part of the valley where the Nadian
wind, funneling through between the hills flanking the depression, had
piled the snow into drifts twice the height of a man. They hunkered
down in the lee of one of the snow-drifts, where the wind could not
reach them. With stiff fingers Ylia withdrew strips of jerked stadmeat
from the inside pocket of her snow cloak, sharing them with Hammeth.
They munched the tough cold meat, Ylia looking at the old man with
tenderness and affection. Her foster father, he had been the only
parent she had ever known. She closed her eyes and for a moment
thought back over the years they had spent as wayfarers on the
Ofridian Plain, the years dreaming of revenge and succor which would
never come, the years....
"Ylia! Ylia!"
Father Hammeth was calling her name, urgently. She shook herself from
her reverie. They were seated with their backs to one of the great
snow-drifts, where it fell off suddenly like a suspended, frozen sea
wave. With a trembling hand Hammeth was pointing before him, out
across the ice fields.
There in the soft snow which mantled the ice of Nadia to a depth of
only a few inches, were footprints. They were not old prints,
deposited there when some wayfarer had passed. Incredibly, they were
being made even as Hammeth and Ylia watched, as if by some creature
with no palpable existence. The icy wind seemed intensified.
* * * * *
"It--it's coming toward us," Hammeth said, his voice a croaking
whisper. Ylia knew that he was afraid again. Somehow with the
advancing years, the steel and fire had gone from Hammeth's heart. Or
perhaps, she thought in sympathy, the terrible defeat and destruction
of Ofrid a hundred years ago had done this to him, had turned one of
the Queen's proven champions into an aging craven wayfarer.
"We'll have to flee," Hammeth said breathlessly.
Behind them was the frozen wave of snow. To the right, far away across
the snows, Abaria and the Plains of Ofrid. To the left, not half a
day's journey, Nadia City. Ahead of them, the advancing footprints.
"Your whip-sword!" Ylia cried. "Quickly."
"I carry it, but I can't use it now," Hammeth protested. "I'm an old
man, Ylia. An old man."
"Then let me have it."
"You? But you're just a girl. You couldn't--"
"Don't you see, Father Hammeth? It's only a man. An Utalian. It can't
be anything else. If he comes in peace, well enough. Otherwise ...
here, give me that sword."
But Hammeth shook his head with unexpected pride and pulled the weapon
from its scabbard.
Just then the footprints became wider spaced and appeared more quickly
in the snow. The invisible Utalian was running toward them. Awkward,
cursing at his own impotence, Hammeth fumbled with his weapon.
_You who call yourself Bram Forest_, Ylia thought, _White God or
whatever you are--help us, help us_! Then she hated herself for the
unbidden thought. Bram Forest had deserted her once, hadn't he, after
she had saved his life? What help could she expect from a man like
Bram Forest? Or was Father Hammeth right? Perhaps Bram Forest had fled
so that Ofrid might one day live again to see the wrath of the gods
fall on Retoc and his Abarians.
Or, Ylia thought with an abrupt flash of insight, perhaps Bram
Forest's flight had been out of his control. Perhaps he was as yet a
pawn in a game he barely understood....
_Bram Forest, we need you!_
The running footprints were almost upon them.